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Octopussy
Octopussy film poster
James Bond	Roger Moore
Also starring	Maud Adams Louis Jourdan Steven Berkoff
Directed by	John Glen
Produced by	Albert R. Broccoli
Novel/Story by	Ian Fleming (stories)
Screenplay	George MacDonald Fraser, Michael G. Wilson, Richard Maibaum
Cinematography by	{{{cinematography}}}
Music by	John Barry
Main theme
Composer	John Barry Tim Rice
Performer	Rita Coolidge
Distributed by	MGM/UA Entertainment Co.
Released	June 6, 1983 (UK) June 10, 1983 (USA)
Running time	125 min.
Budget	$27,500,000
Worldwide gross	$187,500,000
Admissions (world)	59.5 million
Preceded by	For Your Eyes Only
Followed by	A View to a Kill
IMDb profile

Octopussy is the thirteenth James Bond film made by EON Productions. It is the sixth to star Roger Moore as the British Secret Service agent, Commander James Bond. Produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, it was released in 1983, the same year as the release of the unofficial James Bond film Never Say Never Again.

The film's title is taken from Ian Fleming's short story "Octopussy," which was published in the March and April editions of Playboy in 1966. The film's plot is original, with no direct connection to the short story, although there is a connection between characters in the two.

Contents 1 A new James Bond? 2 Plot summary 3 Cast & characters 4 Crew 5 Soundtrack 5.1 Track listing 6 Vehicles & gadgets 7 Locations 7.1 Film locations 7.2 Shooting locations 8 Trivia and commentary 9 Comic book adaptation 10 See also 11 References 12 External links

Following For Your Eyes Only, Roger Moore had expressed a desire to stop playing James Bond. His contract had been for five films, with an option for another. Given his reluctance to return, the producers engaged in a semi-public quest for the next Bond, with names including Timothy Dalton and James Brolin being suggested. However, when the rival Never Say Never Again was announced the producers re-contracted Moore in the belief that an established actor in the role would fare better against Sean Connery. Brolin's three screentests were publicly released for the first time as a special feature named James Brolin: The Man Who Would Be Bond in the Octopussy Ultimate Edition DVD.

The pre-title sequence is unrelated to the rest of the film, involving Bond's mission to destroy technology which has fallen into the hands of an unnamed Latin American country (which could be a reference to Cuba ^[1]), and features him flying a homebuilt microjet (Bede BD-5) aircraft.

When a fatally wounded British agent 009 stumbles into the British Embassy in East Berlin with a fake Fabergé egg (the Coronation egg), MI6 immediately suspect Soviet involvement (the real valuable egg has turned up at auction in London). Bond is sent to find out who the seller is and subsequently why 009 was murdered because of the fake egg. When an exiled Afghan prince, Kamal Khan, clearly has to buy the egg at any price during the auction, Bond follows him back to his palace in India to find out why.

Kamal Khan is working for renegade Soviet General Orlov, who is supplying Khan with real priceless Soviet treasures, replacing them in state depositories with replicas. Kamal Khan is in turn smuggling them into the west with help from the mysterious Octopussy, a fabulously wealthy woman who lives in a floating palace in India, surrounded by women who are members of her "Octopus" cult, each recognized by a tattooed blue-ringed octopus. Octopussy is more than a smuggler, however, and has many legitimate businesses, including shipping, hotels, carnivals and circuses - the latter being used as an ideal front for smuggling jewellery. As a result, many of her female companions and guards are highly trained gymnasts.

After a confrontation over a heavily fixed game of backgammon, Kamal invites Bond to dinner at his palace; however, Bond soon finds himself captive. Managing to sneak around, Bond sees Orlov arrive and hears that they plan to meet at Karl-Marx-Stadt in East Germany, where Octopussy's circus is going to perform, before it heads on a train to the West. Here Orlov smashes the real Fabergé egg, saying that the "fake" has caused enough trouble already. Bond manages to escape from the palace pursued by Kamal on top of elephants, and is saved by some passing American tourists.

Bond infiltrates Octopussy's palace and confronts her, only to find out that she feels indebted to him for letting her father, a British Major, commit suicide rather than face the shame of a court martial when Bond was sent after him for smuggling and murder some years before. With Octopussy now an ally to Bond, Kamal Khan manages to separate the pair long enough to pursue his real plan - to replace the jewellery canister being smuggled by Octopussy's circus with a nuclear bomb. The warhead is primed to go off during a performance at a US Air Force base in West Germany. As the explosion will look like an accident, Europe would insist on nuclear disarmament and thus leave western Europe defenceless against an attack from Orlov's Soviet forces.

In East Germany Bond tries to stop the train with the bomb on board from leaving the Soviet base. He confronts Orlov, who escapes. Bond then follows the train by car, which he even manages to drive on the rails. Also following the train is General Gogol who has found out about Orlov's plan and also tries to stop the train. When Orlov realizes that Bond is aboard he runs after the train too, past the DDR border guards who shoot him dead. Aboard the train, Bond is pursued by Kamal. Bond is forced off, and pursues it on foot and by taking a car. Kamal and his henchman, Gobinda, know about the bomb and leave, passing Bond by the road on their way out, but Kamal thinks they will be 'rid of Bond too'. Bond has trouble getting into the American military base but finally makes his way into the circus tent disguised as a clown. When he tried to explain to the American military that there is a nuclear bomb on the base they think he is 'either drunk or crazy', until Octopussy shoots open the canister containing the bomb. The American guards let Bond go and he manages to defuse the bomb just in time.

Back in India, Kamal is preparing to leave his palace. However, Octopussy and her cult members arrive, along with Q and Bond in a hot air balloon with a huge Union Jack displayed on it. They overpower the guards, although Kamal escapes in a light plane with Octopussy. Bond hangs onto the plane, and battles it out with Gobinda outside the plane, before Bond and Octopussy manage to escape and the plane crashes into the side of a mountain with Kamal inside.

• James Bond - Roger Moore
• Miss Moneypenny - Lois Maxwell
• M - Robert Brown
• Q - Desmond Llewelyn
• Octopussy - Maud Adams
• Kamal Khan - Louis Jourdan
• Magda - Kristina Wayborn
• Gobinda - Kabir Bedi
• General Orlov - Steven Berkoff
• Vijay - Vijay Amritraj
• Mischka (Knife-throwing Twin One) - David Meyer
• Grischka (Knife-throwing Twin Two) - Anthony Meyer
• Fredrick Gray (Minister of Defence) — Geoffrey Keen
• General Gogol — Walter Gotell
• Rubelvitch (Gogol's Assistant) - Eva Rueber-Staier
• Smithers - Jeremy Bulloch
• Penelope Smallbone - Michaela Clavell
• Sadruddin - Albert Moses
• Jim Fanning - Douglas Wilmer

• Directed By: John Glen
• Produced By: Albert R. Broccoli
• Executive Producer: Michael G. Wilson
• Screenplay By: George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum, Michael G. Wilson
• Music Composed By: John Barry
• Production Design By: Peter Lamont

Main article: James Bond music

The score was composed by veteran John Barry, with lyrics by Tim Rice. The opening theme, "All Time High" was sung by Rita Coolidge and is one of only three Bond themes with lyrics that do not reference the film's title (the other two are the On Her Majesty's Secret Service theme "We Have All the Time in the World" and the Casino Royale theme "You Know My Name"). Additionally, it is the third theme not to be named the same as the film; the second was "Nobody Does It Better" from The Spy Who Loved Me.

The original 1983 release by A&M Records was recalled due to a printing error, and became hard to find. The soundtrack was later released in 1997 by Rykodisc with the original soundtrack and dialogue from the film (additional tracks #3, #7, and #10 seen below) on an Enhanced CD version. The 2003 release by EMI restored the original soundtrack, without dialogue. The original music video released for "All Time High" features Rita Coolidge, shot in very soft focus in what appears to be an Indian palace, but rather than one of the locations from the film, it is in fact the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, England.

1. "All Time High" - Rita Coolidge
2. "Bond Look Alike"
3. "Miss Penelope" — dialogue
4. "009 Gets the Knife and Gobinda Attacks"
5. "That's My Little Octopussy"
6. "Arrival at the Island of Octopussy"
7. "Introducing Mr Bond" — dialogue
8. "Bond at the Monsoon Palace"
9. "Bond Meets Octopussy"
10. "Poison Pen" — dialogue
11. "Yo Yo Fight and Death of Vijay"
12. "The Chase Bomb Theme"^[2]
13. "The Palace Fight"
14. "All Time High" - Rita Coolidge

Main articles: List of James Bond vehicles and List of James Bond gadgets

• Acrostar Jet — Used in the opening sequence of the film. The wings of this plane fold up vertically while not in use. During this mission, Bond hid the plane in a horse trailer. Due to a small gas tank, Bond was forced to land at a gas station to refill.
• Alfa-Romeo GTV6 — Stolen from a German woman using a telephone booth, allowing Bond to make it to the Octopussy's circus in time to warn the NATO General present there of the Soviet plot. Then the hottest 'cheap' sports car in Europe, and the most popular Alfa Romeo sports coupe ever made.
• Alligator sub — Bond sneaks onto Octopussy's island by piloting a disguised one-man sub that looks like an alligator.
• Pen — Given to Bond by Q-Branch, this pen contains acid that can burn through any metal. It also contains a bugging device.
• Watch — Another gift from Q-Branch, this watch branded by Seiko comes with a beacon that leads Bond to a Fabergé egg. The model used in the movie is the Seiko G757-5020 (often mistaken for the G757-5000, which had a rubber strap instead of the metal one clearly seen in the movie).
• Mercedes Benz 240D saloon car: Normally mistaken for a 250 or 230.6, this car was stolen by Bond and used to chase the train — having had his tires shot out, Bond is able to ride the rails. The Mercedes crashes into another oncoming train and lands in a river. Earlier in the film, M gives Bond a lift in a similar Mercedes.
• After the loss of his Mercedes, Orlov chases Bond in a GAZ M24 Volga.
• Listening device in the Fabergé egg, before they discover it is false, Bond listens in to learn part of the plot.

• London, England
• East Berlin, Germany (Checkpoint Charlie)
• West Berlin, Germany
• Moscow, Russia
• Udaipur, India (Lake Palace Hotel, Monsoon Palace)
• Karl-Marx-Stadt, Germany
• Feldstadt Airforce Base, Germany
• unnamed Latin American country (most likely Cuba)

• Pinewood Studios / 007 Stage
• India
• Germany
• United States
• England
  • RAF Northolt (posing as South American air base)
  • RAF Lakenheath (posing as Feldstadt Airforce Base, Germany)
  • RAF Oakley (used in hangar fly-through scene)
• Nene Valley Railway, near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire (Karl-Marx-Stadt train station scenes)

• Although the scene at Sotheby's is drawn from the Ian Fleming short story "The Property Of A Lady," little of the actual plot remains. In the original, Bond attempts to spot the KGB's resident contoller in London, who is engaged in the bidding for the "Fabergé Celestial Sphere." Here, he attempts to outbid Kamal Kahn for a Fabergé imperial Easter egg.
• The title of the film comes from a short story in which Bond is assigned by the British Secret Service to apprehend an octopus-loving British officer who is implicated in a murder relating to an illegally obtained cache of Nazi gold. Bond gives the officer the option of committing suicide. The film makes direct reference to the events in the story by revealing that Octopussy's father was the villain of the short story: Major Dexter Smythe. The photograph of Smythe that Octopussy shows Bond is actually a picture of the film's director, John Glen
• The Fabergé egg that is stolen was made in 1897 and is called the Coronation Egg, although its name is not mentioned in the film. The egg contains a model of the Russian Imperial state coach.
• At the end of the film, the credits announce the next Bond film title as From a View to a Kill, but this was later shortened to A View to a Kill shortly before filming began. Octopussy is also the last Bond film to date to announce the title of the next film in the end credits.
• This is the second Bond movie to feature Maud Adams. The producers were initially reluctant to feature her again because her previous character was killed in The Man with the Golden Gun. She holds the record for being the oldest (leading) Bond girl, at 37. Sybil Danning was announced in Prevue Magazine as being Octopussy in 1982, but was not cast..
• Another first-time feature was that the character Q (Desmond Llewelyn) would take a more active role in a Bond movie; a role he reprised in Licence to Kill. Many fans wonder why Q would take part in any field action, because of his relatively advanced age as well as his role as an in-house technician and inventor; obviously, the character was given more screen time because fans liked him and wanted to see more of the character.
• This is also the first movie to feature Robert Brown as M. It is unknown as to whether Brown is supposed to be playing the same character as Bernard Lee (Sir Miles Messervy) or a different one (possibly a promoted Admiral Hargreaves from The Spy Who Loved Me), as the films did not establish until GoldenEye that 'M' is a job title, something that Ian Fleming left ambiguous in the novels (However, Casino Royale suggested that M is at least the first letter or syllable of Judy Dench's character's name). Brown and Bernard Lee both appeared in the classic "The Third Man" as British military police.
• The pre-title sequence was originally to take place in Moonraker (along with the concept of twin knife-throwing assassins) over the Angel Falls, but this was shelved after the river-bed dried up.
• Vijay Amritraj was a professional tennis player in real life. The movie makes a joke of this by having Vijay fend off Kamal's henchmen with a tennis racquet, while the surrounding townspeople watch the conflict like a tennis match by repeatedly turning their heads left and right. At one point, Vijay's character tells 007 that as cover he has secured a job as a tennis pro at the villain, Kamal Khan's, club – learning nothing, but "My backhand's improved"!
• In a classic breaking of the fourth wall, Vijay (disguised as a snake charmer) signals his affiliation to Bond and MI6 by playing the James Bond Theme on a recorder while Bond is disembarking from a boat in the harbor near the Taj Mahal. Bond remarks to Vijay about the "charming tune", a combination self-reference and typical Bond pun.
• Some mentions of the film's title censor it to Octo*****, because of the slang term for a vagina. Of course, the title, both of the Fleming novel and of the movie, is a double entendre.
• A scene where Bond catches Khan cheating at backgammon is adapted from the Bond novel Moonraker, where Bond catches Hugo Drax cheating at contract bridge. A line where Khan tells Bond to spend his money quickly is a direct quote from this novel (Drax does, however, address 007 as "Commander Bond" and Khan calls him "Mr. Bond".)
• Stunt co-ordinator Martin Grace suffered a serious injury while shooting the train scene. During the second day of filming, Grace - who was Roger Moore's stunt double for the scene - carried on doing the scene longer than he should have, due to a miscommunication with the second unit director, and the train entered a section of the track that the team had not properly surveyed. Shortly after, a concrete pole impacted Grace's left leg, causing multiple fractures and lacerations and landing him in hospital for six months. Had the train been travelling much faster, the impact would have ripped the leg off completely. He eventually recovered however, and filled in once again for Moore during the climax of A View to a Kill. Footage of the accident is included in the documentary Inside Octopussy.
• The plot of Octopussy involves renegade Soviet military personnel conspiring to detonate a nuclear weapon at a US Air Base in West Germany, an unconventional example of a first strike, to provide the Warsaw Pact with an excuse for a full scale military invasion of Western Europe. On November 11, 1983, just five months after the release of the film, the Europe wide NATO exercise Able Archer 83 featuring a simulated coordinated nuclear release with participation by heads of state, and a simulated DEFCON 1 nuclear alert, had to be abruptly ended. The realistic nature of the exercise had led some in the USSR to believe that Able Archer 83 was a genuine nuclear first strike.
• The tagline for the film was "Nobody does him better", which is obviously a spin-off of the theme song for The Spy Who Loved Me, "Nobody Does It Better". It could, however, be a jab at Sean Connery, as his unofficial 007 movie, Never Say Never Again was released opposite Octopussy. In the end, Octopussy was the better movie financially.
• According to the documentary Inside Octopussy (included on the DVD releases), the bicyclist seen passing in the middle of a swordfight during the taxi chase sequence was in fact a bystander who passed through the shot, oblivious to the filming; his intrusion was captured by two cameras and left in the final film as an unscheduled stunt.

A magazine format comic book adaptation of Octopussy was produced in 1983 by Marvel Comics. The adaptation was written by Steve Moore and illustrated by Paul Neary.

• Monsoon Palace

1. ^ http://www.ianfleming.org/mkkbb/guide/teasers/teaser-op.shtml
2. ^ Later pressings of the soundtrack erroneously call it "The Chase Bond Theme".

• Octopussy (1983) at the Internet Movie Database
• MGM's official Octopussy site

John Glen
James Bond	For Your Eyes Only (1981) | Octopussy (1983) | A View to a Kill (1985) | The Living Daylights (1987) | Licence to Kill (1989)
1990s	Checkered Flag (with Michael Levine) | Aces: Iron Eagle III | Christopher Columbus: The Discovery
2000s	The Point Men
Television	"Man in a Suitcase" (1967–1968) | "Space Precinct" (1994–1995)